


pieces of peace in the sun's peace of mind

by anirondack



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Dancing, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Platonic Cuddling, Platonic Kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-12
Updated: 2015-11-12
Packaged: 2018-04-22 11:13:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4833296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anirondack/pseuds/anirondack
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Sometimes, when Blue is walking alone on the quieter streets of Henrietta and there’s no one around, she holds out her hand and counts the seconds until she feels icy fingers curl around hers.</i>
  <br/>
  <i>It never takes very long.</i>
</p><p>A series of moments between Blue Sargent and Noah Czerny.</p>
            </blockquote>





	pieces of peace in the sun's peace of mind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Skylark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skylark/gifts).



> Written for the Raven Cycle Ship Swap. Prompt was for Blue/Noah friendship.
> 
> Title taken from "Ride" by twenty one pilots.
> 
> you can find this as a podfic [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6539482)

Sometimes, when Blue is walking alone on the quieter streets of Henrietta and there’s no one around, she holds out her hand and counts the seconds until she feels icy fingers curl around hers.

It never takes very long.

*

In the middle of a very warm August day, when no one wants to be outside and everyone else is suffering from having a beating heart and skin with pores that sweat too much, Noah hears a loud knock at the door to Monmouth Manufacturing. He shuffles off of his (still perfectly made) bed and to the front door, peering through an eye hole that might really just be a crack that Gansey reinterpreted because he was too busy to fix it and he knew Ronan wouldn’t deal with it either.

Blue is on the other side, carrying a big white paper envelope and a dark flush. Noah opens the door for her and Blue sighs in relief, pushing through the doorway with an, “oh thank God”. Noah blinks a few times, then closes the door and trails after her.

He finds the paper envelope on Gansey’s bed and the bottom half of Blue lying on the ground visible through the bathroom doorway. He follows overheated brown skin to the bathroom’s open refrigerator, where Blue has put her head.

“Y’know, I may not use this bathroom or anything, but even I can tell you that’s not sanitary in the slightest.”

“Don’t care,” Blue mumbles from inside the fridge. “Too hot to worry about gross boys.”

“I’m just saying, Ronan probably peed exactly where you are.”

“That’s super gross,” Blue says, but she doesn’t get up.

“Gansey was touching his junk right there like two hours ago.”

“You’re so  _mean_ ,” Blue says. She kicks vaguely in his direction with one foot, then groans and goes limp again.

“All I’m saying is–”

“You know what? I’m taking your present back to the store.”

“You got me a present?”

“Not anymore, I didn’t.”

“Aww.” Noah pouts. “Please?”

“Ugh, you’re awful.” Blue waves one hand toward Gansey’s bed. “It’s the paper thing.”

Noah retreats to Gansey’s bed and picks up the big envelope, turning it over in his hands. He rips the tape from the edge and reaches in and pulls out an old, rather beat up vinyl copy of  _Enema of the State_  by blink-182. A small smile drags its way across his face as he pulls the record from its sleeve, holding it up to look at the tiny grooves.

“Where did you get this?”

“Me’n Orla went to a record shop today, only I don’t like the music Orla listens to, so while she was looking at CDs, I was looking at old records because the covers are cool, and then I saw that one and I remembered you liked it and that Gansey’s got a record player but his records are all terrible, so now you have something good to listen to.”

Blue never takes her head out of the fridge, so her voice sounds echo-y and odd the whole way though.

Noah’s grinning anyway.

He drags Gansey’s record player into the middle of the room and swaps out whatever overly intellectual band Gansey was listening to for Mark Hoppus and Tom DeLonge and Travis Barker. He prods at buttons and knobs and plugs until, all at once,  _Dumpweed_  starts coming out of the speaker.

Noah looks down at the spinning record delightedly, and then looks over at the lower half of Blue. “It works!”

She raises her fist in the air a few inches in victory, then lets it fall back down with a thump.

Noah sheds his perpetual Aglionby sweater, dropping it on the floor, then stands up. He rolls back and forth on the balls of his feet as he plays air guitar with DeLonge, spinning on one foot and striking poses. Blue peeks her head out of the refrigerator and laughs. “When did you become a rock star?”

Noah slams some imaginary chords. “Never played. I didn’t have the coordination. Always wanted to, though.” The song switches and so does his imaginary instrument. He drops down on one knee next to Gansey’s bed and plucks the strings of a bass only he can see, headbanging at half speed. Blue giggles. “I saw this song live, it was so much fun.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, in 2004. My mom let me go to a show a few states over, it was amazing.”

“You’re lucky.”

“I know.” He smiles at her, then starts headbanging again, running his hand over invisible frets.

When the fade of a chord bleeds into an aggressive drumline, he gets up and moves to the bathroom door, holding his hand out.

Blue eyes his hand, then his face. “It’s like four thousand degrees.”

“Nah, it’s fine. I’m cold.”

Blue thinks about for a moment, then groans and takes Noah’s hand, pulling herself up. He laughs delightedly and tugs her into the main room. Blue awkwardly pulls off her damp shirt, leaving just her dress on, and tosses it onto Gansey’s bed. It’s a little cooler like that, and even better still when Noah grabs her other hand and bounces. His smile is infectious and she can’t help but return it as he spins her around twice. The rhythm of the bass gets into her, making her dance a little, tapping her foot and swinging her hips and tossing her head back. Noah makes her hands wave in the air until the chorus lead in, and then they start jumping together, like they’re more than the two of them in a deserted warehouse. Noah wipes a sweaty strand of hair from Blue’s cheek and places his cold hand on the back of her neck. Heat seeps out of the air around them and Blue sighs in relief, even as she’s panting from dancing.

When the song slows down, Blue presses up against Noah and Noah wraps his freezing arms around her, swaying from side to side. It reminds her a little of awkward school dances, but it’s nice and it’s cold and dancing with Noah is fun, so she pulls back and starts jumping again and spins him this time. Noah looks radiant, as solid as a living person, singing along loudly to words that Blue vaguely remembers hearing on the radio as a child.

They dance together until the record runs out and Gansey’s record player starts making a worrying ticking noise. Noah digs through Gansey’s Box Of Henrietta City Model Supplies and finds a few push pins, and together they carefully pin the record sleeve to the wall in Noah’s room. Noah looks at it happily, and then presses a light, chilled kiss to Blue’s cheek. “That was a great present, thank you.”

Blue smiles to herself and leans into Noah’s side, tucking her head under his chin, and says, “Any time.”

*

It’s very late in the afternoon and twilight is swiftly approaching. The sunset is beautiful today, but Adam is enjoying it under the hood of a car, and Gansey is enjoying it under his President Cell Phone persona at his mother’s political event, and Ronan is probably not enjoying it at all because he’s with Declan and Matthew.

Blue sits on a park bench, kicking her feet against the slight breeze, and barely even jumps when she hears a voice next to her.

“Lovely out tonight.”

“There’s a fire in the next city,” Blue says. “Calla told me. It’s burning pretty bad.”

“Buzzkill.”

Blue glances to the side and catches the faint outline of Noah’s body. She can see the end of the bench through him, but it’s a little distorted, like looking through dirty glass.

“It’s better than saying it’s because of pollution,” she says. “Which is also true, but sucks even more because you can’t get a firetruck and put it out.”

“Yeah.” Blue’s shoulder feels cold as Noah leans his transparent head against her. “It’s still pretty, though.”

The sunset is aggressively orange and gold, falling into red and purple toward the horizon. Dark clouds slash through the sky, making the orange that much brighter.

Blue nods. “It’s beautiful. It’s just… too bad that it hurts somewhere.”

“Everything hurts somewhere.”

“Why?”

There’s a rustle of a breeze as Noah shrugs. “That’s just how stuff works, I guess. Everything requires a sacrifice.”

“I don’t think it’s worth it,” Blue says. “People’s lives for a sunset? Doesn’t balance out.”

“It’s usually not worth it.” Noah’s voice is more solid than his body, more tight than his shadow gives credit for. “In fact, it almost never is.”

“Oh, Noah.” Blue reaches out to touch his knee and finds only a burst of cold air. She frowns, but the chill on her shoulder doesn’t leave her. “I know it’s not.”

“I think sometimes that if I could do it again, I wouldn’t,” Noah says sadly. “Sometimes I think I wouldn’t go. I wouldn’t have followed him into the forest, I wouldn’t have listened to him about ley lines even though he was right. I wouldn’t have let him take my car or open my trunk or make me believe.”

“Sometimes?” Blue wishes desperately that Noah were more solid so she could hug him, or hold his hand, or do anything at all. “Why wouldn’t you take that back?”

Noah’s huff of breath scatters leaves on the grass in front of her. It seems to come from everywhere at once, right in her ear. “Because then I wouldn’t have you, Blue Sargent. Any of you. Who else would I find in this city who believed in me?”

“I believe in you, Noah,” Blue says, unnecessarily.

Out of the corner of her eye, she thinks she sees the faint, shimmering outline of a smile. “I know you do, Blue.”

*

“Is it true,” Blue asks one crisp fall day as she and Noah walk through the borderline where unkempt foliage meets city and trees grow out of the pavement, “that Ronan once threw you out the window?”

Noah pauses, then breathes out a laugh. “Yeah, more than once. Nothing happens, but he gets a good laugh out of it.”

“Do you like it?”

“Getting thrown out of windows? Kind of reminds me of Aglionby. That was less out of windows and more into lockers, though.”

Blue frowns. “Does Ronan know you don’t like it?”

“I didn’t say I don’t like it,” Noah says. “It’s a little scary when it’s not expected.”

“When  _is_  it expected?” Blue asks, slightly scandalized.

“We were messing around once or twice and we thought it might be interesting to see what happened,” Noah replies. “He asked the first time, obviously.”

“What was it like?”

“Scary, at first,” Noah admits. “Sometimes I don’t always remember that nothing’s going to happen, you know?”

Blue shudders a little. “I guess.”

“So it freaked me out until I hit the ground and I was fine, and then it was kind of exciting after that.” Noah smiles a little, fondly, as they reach a bridge over a small river. “We went up on a parking structure one night, up to the highest level, and he just kind of… tossed me off. It was great.”

“How could falling off a building be  _great_?”

“Well, once you know you’re not going to die because of it, it’s just like flying,” Noah explains. “It’s exhilarating, really, like you’re falling and there’s wind in your face and you’re like… Free from the world for a moment. It’s great.”

Without warning, he takes a few running steps and then vaults over the edge of the bridge and down.

Blue can’t hold back her scream, even though she claps her hands over her mouth almost immediately. She rushes to the edge and peers over, but there’s no Noah and there’s no splash of a body in the water.

There is, however, a grinning teenage boy behind her, tapping her on the shoulder. Blue almost screams again, whirling around, and there’s Noah, looking windswept and slightly rumpled, with a massive grin across his face. Blue lets out a sigh of relief, then punches Noah hard in the shoulder. He grabs his arm in mock pain, but his grin doesn’t fade.

“Noah Czerny, you  _jerk_! You scared me!”

“Sorry. Your heart still beating in there?” He taps two fingers against her sternum.

“Yeah, no thanks to you!” Blue gives him her best glare, but he looks so bright and happy that she can’t hold it for long.

“Just like flying,” Noah repeats, and he sets off down the path again, hands stuffed in his (totally dry) pockets.

Blue sighs and chuckles to herself, then trots off after him to bump him with her shoulder again.

*

“I have a present for you,” Noah says, when the October chill begins to invade Henrietta and Blue has to trade in her short dresses for leggings and jeans or else her legs will begin to match her name.

“Oh yeah? What is it? Something  _ghostly_? Something  _magic_?” Blue wiggles her fingers in the air.

“No?” Noah digs a small, lumpy, badly wrapped package out of a shoulder bag he seems to have commandeered as of late. It might have been Gansey’s, once upon a time, but Noah seems extra fond of it, so he carries it around when he’s there and when he vanishes, one of them will dutifully pick it up and return it to Monmouth, and then the next time they see him, it’s slung back over his shoulder.

Noah passes the package to Blue, who shakes it a little and predictably hears nothing. She carefully slides her nail under the tape and pries it open, folding the paper back. A mass of yarn falls out into her hand. Blue wads the paper up and shoves it in her pocket, then turns the yarn mess over in her hands. She finds a couple of holes and slides one hand into it. Her fingers peek out of the top, and then her thumb pops through a small hole in the side.

“They’re gloves,” Noah says excitedly. “Sort of. They’re fingerless gloves.”

Blue slips the other glove on and holds them out in front of her. They’re a pale mossy green with threads of yellow running through them, making long lines in the gloves from finger to wrist. There are some holes in them - Blue recognizes them as stitches dropped - but they’re very soft and the yellow turns gold as the light hits them at the right angle.

“They’re comfy,” she says, rubbing her hands together. The yarn fluffs up a little. “So soft. Where did you get them?”

Noah give her a shy smile. “I made them.”

“What? No way.” Blue tugs one of the gloves down a little further on her wrist. “When did you learn how to crochet?”

“Knit, actually. My mom used to do it, way back when, and there’s not really a lot to do when you guys are at school and I happen to exist.”

“So you took up knitting? That’s–” Blue wants to say adorable, but she’s not sure that Noah would appreciate it. “That’s so awesome, Noah. These are great.”

His smile grows brighter and he looks a little more substantial than before. “Here, give me your hand.”

She extends her hand out to him and he takes it in his. His fingers are cold, but the gloves dampen it a lot. It’s not quite warm, but it’s not icy either. Blue smiles down at their hands together, then reaches up and rests her palm on Noah’s cheek. “Thank you, Noah. I love them.”

“I like them too,” Noah admits. “I’m going to make Gansey some next.”

“You should make Adam some, if you have the chance. His hands are wrecked.”

“I’ll start making an order sheet.”

“My aunt Jimi knits too,” Blue says. “I can see if she has any yarn to spare.”

“Oh, no, that’s okay. I only use  _ghost yarn_.”

Blue laughs and then Adam and Ronan show up in Adam’s terrible run down car to take them away to Cabeswater, but a week from then, Gansey comes home to Monmouth to see a cardboard box stuffed with skeins of yarn sitting at the foot of the stairs.

*

“Remember that time you kissed me?” Blue asks while they’re lying on the grass in a park two blocks from 300 Fox Way (which is the closest that Noah will get), watching clouds drift lazily across the sky.

“I do remember that, quite fondly,” Noah says. “It was my first kiss in seven years.”

“It was my first kiss in seventeen,” Blue replies. “I think I have you beat.”

“It’s not a race, Sargent. Both of us are tragic.” Noah reaches up and picks a flower growing in the grass, then pulls off a few petals. He tosses the petals over Blue’s face. Blue grimaces and makes an undignified snorting noise trying to keep from inhaling them.

“Knock it off, I’m being serious.”

“I know, it’s a terrible trait. You and Gansey have been spending too much time together.”

Blue freezes, eyes wide with panic. “Oh… Have we?”

“Nah. Never too much Gansey. Don’t you just love ancient Welsh mythology and boat shoes?”

“To tell you the truth, I could do without the boat shoes.”

“Ronan hates the boat shoes too. He tried to burn a pair once. Apparently he forgot that Gansey has like infinity money, so Gansey retaliated by buying more boat shoes. It’s a travesty, let me tell you. Monmouth is overrun.”

Blue giggles and Noah throws more flower petals into her hair.

“I liked it when you kissed me,” she says.

“I remember. You were also very sad.”

“I– yeah. I was. I am. It sucks.”

“Yeah, fuck kissing,” Noah agrees brightly.

“No, not that. I liked the kissing.”

“Yeah, kissing is great,” Noah says cheerfully.

Blue waves vaguely over her head and knocks the side of Noah’s face. “You know what I mean.”

“Yeah,” Noah says, not very cheerfully this time. “I do. But I don’t like it when you’re sad. Any of you.”

“I don’t like being sad either, but I think you should kiss me again.”

“Oh yeah? What happened to ‘fuck kissing?’”

“You said that.”

“Oh yeah. My bad.”

“You don’t have to kiss me if you don’t want to.”

“No, no, that’s not it, I like kissing and stuff, it’s great. I guess I’m just curious as to why?”

Blue sighs and shrugs into the grass. “I just… I don’t know. I’ve been thinking a lot about stuff, especially with my mom, and when she went off to find Butternut–”

“Butternut?”

“My, uh. Artemus. My dad. The man who fathered me with his DNA. He wasn’t much of a dad, I guess, but I found him, down in that cave. And I’ve been thinking about the Gray Man, and Ronan, and Ronan’s mom, and all the stuff that’s going on, and I guess I just wanted to feel that again.”

Noah pushes himself up on his elbow and studies her face for a long moment. Then he leans down and kisses her, upside down.

Blue sighs into the kiss and presses up to meet him. He brushes a strand of her hair away from her cheek, then pulls back and kisses her forehead before he sits up. Blue rolls onto her side and holds out her hands, so Noah scoots over and lets her put her head in his lap.

“I feel like I don’t want to do what happens next,” she admits.

“How do you mean?”

“My mom’s messed up over being lost in the cave and we have to do something about that, and I have a crazy fifteenth century witch living in my house and we gotta do something about her, and we’re so close to finding Glendower, I think, and what then?” Blue pushes herself upright to sit across from Noah. “How do we just… Go back to normal?”

“I don’t know what you think normal is, but I’ve been thinking about that ley line since I was alive,” Noah says. “This is normal now.”

“And when all the magic’s gone? When we’ve got our Welsh king and Gansey is– Gansey wins his prize or whatever he gets for finding him, when all of this is done, what happens to us?”

“We carry on,” Noah says simply. “Just like we always have.”

Blue slumps forward and rests her head against his chest. “I think I could use another kiss.”

Noah smiles into her hair. “Anything for you, Blue.”

*

Sometimes, when Blue is standing at the entrance to Cabeswater, when Ronan is shouting in Latin and the trees are whispering back, when Adam is pacing from trunk to trunk and flipping cards over between his fingers, when Gansey is curled over on himself on top of a root system flipping through his journal for the eight million and twelfth time, she will hold her arm out and count the seconds until icy fingers curl into the crook of her elbow and a familiar cool weight leans into her side.

“Are you ready for an adventure, Ms. Sargent?” Noah asks, a smile evident in his voice.

“I believe I am, Mr. Czerny,” Blue grins. “Let’s do it.”

(It never takes very long.)


End file.
